Toxic Assets: Making Polluters Pay When Wells Run Dry and the Bill Comes Due (Apr 2021)

As the fossil fuel era faces its necessary and inevitable end, several questions loom large: When the oil and gas stop flowing, what will happen to the millions of wells drilled onshore and offshore, the pipelines and plants that transport and process the fuels, and the lands and waters where they sit? Who pays the cost of closing down and cleaning up extraction sites or remediating the significant health and environmental impacts of production? What legal obligations do public and private actors have to protect local communities from the toxic legacy of oil and gas production?

Toxic Assets: Making Polluters Pay When Wells Run Dry and the Bill Comes Due explores the fast-approaching post-production phase of the oil and gas lifecycle. As the fossil fuel industry sunsets, the world must confront the industry’s toxic legacy and take urgent action to ensure the cleanup costs fall on companies, not communities. The report begins by exposing the structural flaws in legal and regulatory frameworks that have created these unfunded environmental liabilities through a close look at problems with planning and financing for well closure in the United States and Canada. It then makes recommendations about what is needed to mitigate the resultant harms to public health and the public purse and ensure that polluters pay. Finally, it cautions those countries contemplating starting up oil and gas operations today to think hard about the costs associated with shutting them down tomorrow.

Read the full, designed report here.